Bible Commentaries
John 9

Verses 1-41

IX 1-41 Sight is given to the Man born Blind —Much comment would only serve to blunt the fine edge of this graphic, animated and fascinating page. It is the finest description of varying attitudes and reactions in the Gospels. Closely connected with the foregoing revelation of Jesus as the Light of the World, it tells of a miracle of physical illumination, 1-7, its public confirmation, 8:12, its victorious emergence from a triple inquiry, 13-18, 19-23, 24-34, its sequel in the spiritual illumination of the healed man, 35-38, its significance as indicated by Jesus himself, 39-41. The following points are to be noted.

1. Some time probably elapsed between the attempt to stone Jesus and this miracle.

2-4. The question of the disciples (first mention since 6:68) does not suppose belief in metempsychosis but a popular unphilosophic notion of disease being a punishment of prenatal or parental sin. The providential purpose of this man’s congenital blindness was really a manifestation of Jesus through one of the works which he must work till the day of his mortality ends in the night of death.

5. As long as ever he is in the world, he must visibly be the ’light of the world’. It is to emphasize this that he works the miracle.

6-7. The dust moistened with spittle may be reminiscent of the creation of Adam, or symbolic of the Word made flesh, but the washing in the pool of Siloam (SE. of Jerusalem) etymologically denoting the water sent from Gihon through the tunnel of Ezechias more clearly symbolizes the baptism by which the divine Envoy illuminates. The man went home from the pool with sight restored.

8-12. The discussion raised amongst neighbours and others who had known the blind beggar results in evidence which has the vigorous brevity of three very positive verbs: I went, I washed, I (looked and) saw.

13-17. The fine matter-of-fact positiveness of the healed man appears also in the first inquiry, for while the Pharisees dispute on the case of a Sabbath-breaking miracle-worker, he affirms his belief that the man is a Prophet.

18-23. The fear of the parents to involve themselves in a statement that could be construed as a confession that Jesus was the Messias is easily understood, for any Jews, especially poor people like these would quail before the threat of excommunication—not apparently the nezipha (or one week’s ostracism under reprimand), nor the niddui (like a Lent of public penance) but the ?erem (a major ban which made its subject a pariah).

24-34. The second citation of the healed man or rather attempt to bully him into false testimony under adjuration—’give glory to God’ meant: ’Tell the truth’, Joshua 7:19—leads to a fine duel between hypocrisy and simple truth. The native humour of the brave respondent gives his answers a caustic turn. Abuse —the arm of the defeated—becomes the resource of the Pharisees. Against their ’we know that God spoke to Moses; but as to this man: we know not whence he is’, the man speaks a ’we know’ of common sense justified in every particular by the concrete circumstances of the case. The Pharisees proceed to a final fury of arrogant abuse and excommunicate him for the crime of being miraculously cured on the Sabbath.

35-38. Jesus (sought and) found the outcast. Now he only saw the light of day, but, by his courageous confession that his benefactor must be from God, was also coming to the light of truth. That further spiritual illumination Jesus also gave him ’Dost thou believe in the Son of Man?’ is the better attested reading. The man certainly believed there and then that Jesus was the Messias, and probably in the full divine sense of the term, for adoration in Jn seems to mean latria only. Certainly the synagogue that had cast him out was already the blindfolded institution which we see represented by St Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:15, and by medieval art. The city of Saint-Paul-TroisChâteaux in the valley of the Rhône claims that its first bishop St Restitutus was the man born blind. Whatever the historical verdict may be, the claim deserves to be mentioned. Provence also boasts that he succeeded St Maximin as Bishop of Aix.

39-41. The judgement of discrimination which Jesus came to exercise in the world is shown by this narrative (cf.Luke 2:34). The little ones, with no pretence to be learned or seers, come to see, and those who have ’the key of knowledge’ become blind (cf.Matthew 11:25; Matthew 23:16 ff.). When the Pharisees ask if they also are blind, Jesus answers that theirs is not the blindness which takes away responsibility.